Darren Sweetnam – “There’s serious competition in the squad, it’s what you need.”.

Flying winger Darren Sweetnam is settling back into competitive action this season following a breakthrough year in Munster’s last campaign that saw him named the province’s young player of the year.

The multi-talented athlete who has lined out for the Cork senior hurlers as well as representing his country in underage hockey claimed his second try of the season in the win over the Ospreys last Saturday. He says that he’s enjoying the atmosphere at the club this season. “We have a great environment around here. There’s a great buzz, it’s so much fun to play in this team.”

With new the new additions to the squad from abroad and the academy, Munster will enjoy the benefits of a deep and talented squad this season. Sweetnam welcomes the competition and believes that it’s needed if the province is to have a successful year.

“It’s getting very competitive, Alex Wootton is playing out of his skin, I think it just drives us on. Three wins from three and we still have some of the Internationals to come off the bench and the Lions to come back, there’s serious competition in the squad, it’s what you need.”

So far, this season we have seen a glimpse of what Munster have been working on in preseason, an emphasis has certainly been put on developing a more expansive attacking game. The former Bandon Grammar student has praised the forwards for their improvement on the attacking side of the ball and says that it benefits the back three as well.

“We’ve been working on our offloading and our pass quality over the preseason. It’s really showing on the forwards – their hands are excellent, they’re able to throw passes as well as a back. It makes such a difference because we’re able to play a more expansive game, we can throw the ball around a bit which suits the back three players.”

This Friday evening Munster travel to take on Glasgow Warriors in a top of the conference clash. Both sides come into the game undefeated. Sweetnam is expecting a stern test against a side that have only conceded 2 tries this season but also believes that they the Warriors will continue to play an expansive game under new head coach Dave Rennie.

“They’ve only conceded two tries so far, we’ve conceded three so their D is going to be very good. They’ve a new coach who likes to play an expansive game, they always used to play that anyway, they like to throw the ball around so we need to try and tackle that. It’s going to be interesting, hopefully we can go over and get a win.”

“It’s such a competitive league now everyone’s so close, there’s such little margins, we just need to keep working hard in training and pushing on”